Willy Swenson

 Willy Swenson

Mr. Ippolito

AP Biology

December 13th, 2020

“Neanderthals Buried Their Dead: New Evidence.” ScienceDaily, 2020, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201209140358.htm. Accessed 14 Dec. 2020.

‌In the article “Neanderthals Buried Their Dead: New Evidence”, the authors explain new evidence discovered on the subject of burial in the Neanderthal communities in France from 41,000 BC. The new evidence comes from an old archaeological dig. Using bones found from 1970, a French and Spanish research team was able to conclude that the bones were indeed buried all those years ago. They concluded this based on three crucial pieces of evidence. The first is that the preservation of the skeleton was better than any bison or animal bones from the same time period, suggesting that there was rapid burial. Also, the dirt layers around the skeleton at the dig site were much older than the surrounding layers of sediment. The last piece of evidence is that the bones were relatively not scattered at all, and much less scattered than animal bones that were buried under natural conditions. While all of these pieces of evidence are important to understand if Neanderthals practiced burial with their dead, more extensive research must be conducted in order to conclude chronology and geographical extension of Neanderthal burial practices. 

It is very interesting to understand if the Neanderthals practiced burial with their dead because we garner a new understanding of how complex the thoughts of Neanderthals were. Burial of the dead is often practiced in well-developed species, such as homosapians. As we inch closer to the mystery of burial techniques of Neanderthals, we also inch closer to understanding this ancient group that coexisted and interbred with our homosapien ancestors. I was initially attracted to this topic because I wanted a break from all of the biological misfortunes and disasters that our World is facing today and learn about something that is noncontroversial. This topic is also interesting to me because I took a DNA test and I found out that I was <2% Neanderthal, so maybe one of my Neanderthal ancestor’s skeleton is still preserved somewhere, buried under hundreds of feet of sediment.